Tsunami watch lifted in most of Indian Ocean

                                                                

A tsunami watch around the Indian Ocean has been lifted hours after two powerful earthquakes hit off Indonesia’s western coast. 

The U.S. Geological Survey said the first 8.6-magnitude quake was centered about 30 km beneath the ocean floor around 430 km from Aceh province.

That prompted the Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii to issue a tsunami watch for Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, Australia, Myanmar, Thailand, the Maldives and other Indian Ocean islands, Malaysia, Pakistan, Somalia, Oman, Iran, Bangladesh, Kenya, South Africa and Singapore.

A wave measuring less than 80 cm high, rolled to Indonesia’s coast. There were no other signs of serious damage.

But just as the region was sighing relief, an 8.2-magnitude aftershock hit.

“We just issued another tsunami warning,” Prih Harjadi, from Indonesia’s geophysics agency, told TVOne in a live interview.

People along the western coast of Sumatra island and the Mentawai islands were told to stay clear of coasts.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre's watch remained in effect. A tsunami watch means there is the potential for a tsunami, not that one is imminent.

The 8.6- and 8.2-magnitude earthquakes triggered panic on Wednesday afternoon. Residents in coastal cities fled to high ground in cars and on the backs of motorcycles.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii lifted a tsunami watch for most areas of the Indian Ocean about four hours after the first quake. It was still in effect for Indonesia, India, the Maldives, Sri Lanka and the island territory of Diego Garcia.

Major damage or tsunami waves locally were not reported.

The massive earthquake off Indonesia’s western coast triggered tsunami fears across the Indian Ocean on Wednesday, sending residents in coastal cities fleeing to high ground in cars and on the backs of motorcycles.

A strong aftershock nearly three hours later sparked a new wave of panic. Indonesia’s government responded by issuing a fresh tsunami warning.

Some residents were crying in Aceh, where memories of a 2004 tsunami that killed 170,000 people in the province alone, are still raw. Others screamed “God is great” as they poured from their homes or searched frantically for separated family members.

The initial quake was a strike-slip, not a thrust quake, according to experts. In a strike-slip quake, the earth moves horizontally rather than vertically and doesn’t displace large volumes of water.

They were still analysing the aftershock.

“When I first saw this was an 8.7 near Sumatra, I was fearing the worst,” Roger Musson, seismologist at the British geological survey who has studied Sumatra’s fault lines, noting one of the initial reported magnitudes for the quake. “But as soon as I discovered what type of earthquake it was, then I felt a lot better.